33
Ella learned that Dante Bello lived in the East Village in a 1940s brownstone with his mother, Lena. She followed him for four days, just as she’d followed Rachel Quinn, hoping that by following him she’d somehow be inspired.
Each day he left his apartment about noon, and the first thing he did was walk his dog—a midsize black one that Ella thought was some kind of Labrador. Just as with Quinn, Ella couldn’t imagine why New Yorkers, living in apartment buildings, would want dogs. Anyway, after the dog had taken a crap, Dante would return to his mother’s place, change clothes, and then walk six blocks to a rundown bar called Frank’s Lounge. While she was watching Dante, Ella saw two of the men who’d been in the courthouse photo with him and Vinnie Caniglia enter the bar. It appeared that Frank’s Lounge was headquarters for Vinnie C’s pathetic crew of thugs.
During the four days she watched him, three of those days Dante stayed inside Frank’s Lounge until six and then returned to his apartment, where Ella imagined he had dinner with his mother. She had no idea what he could possibly be doing inside the bar all afternoon. One afternoon, he left the lounge and took a ride in a sedan with Vinnie and another man, and Ella followed them to a pawnshop in Queens. Ella suspected the pawnshop owner might be someone who fenced whatever Vinnie’s guys stole.
After Dante would dine with his mom, he and his friends would entertain themselves. One night it was a sports bar where they watched a Mets game and played pool; another night it was a shabby card place in Brooklyn where they played poker; two of the four nights they went to bars that attracted single women with big hair, tight skirts, and too much makeup. One night Dante left with a blonde who was two inches taller than him.
Ella never saw Dante or anyone else in Vinnie’s crew doing anything that appeared to be illegal, and she couldn’t help wondering how they made any money. Maybe they were lying low because of the Viagra bust, but whatever the case, Dante’s life as a gangsta appeared incredibly monotonous.
Ella was stuck. She couldn’t find any way to link Dante Bello to Dominic DiNunzio. As near as she could tell, Dominic and Dante had only two things in common: They were both wops and they both liked dogs. Yep, Dominic, too, owned a dog—she’d learned this from his obituary—but in Dominic’s case that made some sense, as he owned a home and had three kids. But what good would it do her that Dominic and Dante both had dogs?
She could imagine one scenario: Dominic and Dante are both walking their dogs in one of those parks where they’re allowed to unleash their mutts so they can run around and hump each other. And Dante, being the violent nut that he is, gets into a fight with another dog walker, pounds on him, and Dominic witnesses the encounter—and then Dante decides to kill Dominic because he’s a witness.
No, that was just stupid. Although she had no problem at all imagining Dante beating someone half to death, it would be almost impossible to put him and DiNunzio in the same park, at the same time, and then build a credible backstory that would support such an event.
Another possibility, she supposed, was to build a paper trail showing that Dominic was laundering money for Vinnie Caniglia’s low-rent Mafia operation. She would have to break into Dominic’s office and, with the aid of a hacker, plant files in his computer that would provide evidence that he was in cahoots with Vinnie—and then create some scenario where there’s a falling-out between thieves and Vinnie sends Dante to whack Dominic to keep him from talking. But Ella knew that the chances of making that work would be almost impossible. It was too complicated; there were just too many moving parts. She’d have to somehow establish that a respected member of the community, a man with no criminal record, had a secret life working with a minor Mafia don.
Shit.
Then Ella made what she considered to be a brilliant intellectual leap: Who said there had to be any link between Dante Bello and Dominic DiNunzio?
Ella again dressed in comfortable lounge-around-the-house clothes, made a pot of coffee, and went on another Internet Easter egg hunt. This time she searched for articles mentioning Vinnie Caniglia or Dante Bello—and she found the golden egg.
One month before Dominic DiNunzio was killed, Vinnie Caniglia and his boys were involved in an altercation in Atlantic City, and the event made the papers because of the mayhem that ensued. Vinnie had been playing craps at the Borgata Casino—and into the same casino comes another hood, named Carmine Fratello, accompanied by his girlfriend and a couple of his pals.
According to the press, there was a history of bad blood between Carmine Fratello and Vinnie Caniglia, and the next thing you know, Vinnie and Carmine are chest-bumping and screaming at each other, their entourages get involved, a punch is tossed, and a brawl commences. Innocent bystanders are knocked to the floor, chairs are overturned, drinks are spilled, chips are scattered, and every security guy in the casino is needed to break up a fight involving six or seven beefy Italians. Naturally, after the fighters are pulled apart, Fratello and Caniglia threaten each other: “I’m gonna kill your fuckin’ ass.”
And Ella knew all this because, as is often the case these days, bystanders had videotaped the combatants on their cell phones. One guy posted a video of the fight on YouTube, showing blood pouring out of Vinnie Caniglia’s nose. But it wasn’t Vinnie’s broken nose that interested Ella.
It was Carmine Fratello who caught her eye.
Carmine Fratello was a big, overweight man who looked Italian and had short dark hair. Dominic DiNunzio was a big overweight man who looked Italian and had short dark hair. Otherwise, Carmine didn’t really look too much like Dominic. By comparison, Toby Rosenthal and Dante Bello looked enough alike that they could have been first cousins—whereas Carmine’s face was rounder than Dominic’s, his nose was longer, his chin was more blunt, and his hair was receding faster than Dominic’s.
But it didn’t matter. Close enough was all that Ella required.
Ella needed one crucial piece of information when it came to framing Dante Bello for Dominic DiNunzio’s murder—and this could be a deal breaker if she didn’t get the answer she wanted.
What she needed to know was where Dante had been the night Dominic DiNunzio was killed. If Dante had a credible alibi for his whereabouts that night, then Ella was screwed and would have to start all over. But based on what she’d seen during the four days she followed him, Dante was most likely eating dinner with his mom or was with his low-life friends at Frank’s Lounge the night Dominic was shot—and if that was the case, he had no alibi at all. If one of Dante’s goombah buddies swore that Dante was with him, no jury would believe the goombah. Ditto with Dante’s mom. What mother wouldn’t lie to protect her son?
On the other hand, if Dante was in jail or if there was a photo of him passing through a tollbooth or a date/time-stamped credit card receipt showing he was in Jersey on that fateful evening … well, then Ella was screwed. And to find out where he was, the only way she could think was to ask him.
Ella didn’t want Dante to see her face, so she called his apartment at eleven a.m., figuring he would just be getting out of bed to take his dog out for its midday dump. His mother answered, and Ella asked to speak to her son.
“He’s in bed,” Lena said.
“Wake him up,” Ella said. “My name is Detective Margret Ross, NYPD.” There actually was a Detective Margret Ross who worked robbery/homicide at the 105th Precinct in Queens.
“A detective?” Lena Bello said.
“That’s correct,” Ella said, “and this involves a serious criminal matter and I need to speak to him.”
“My boy didn’t do anything.”
Ella didn’t bother to say, Yeah, right. She said, “I need to speak to him, Mrs. Bello. Immediately.”
Five long minutes later, Dante picked up the phone and said, “Who the fuck is this?”
What a charmer. “As I told your mother, Mr. Bello, my name is Detective Margret Ross, NYPD.”
“On March fifteenth of this year, a man fitting your description killed a clerk named James Kim in a liquor store in Queens.”
“What?” Dante said.
“Last week a witness came forward and provided us with a telephone video record of the man leaving the liquor store, and facial recognition software led us to you.”
“Oh, bullshit,” Dante said.
“No, Mr. Bello, it’s not bullshit. I will tell you, however, as this will come out in court anyway, that the photo of the man’s face in the video is somewhat blurred, and our facial recognition software also made possible matches with five other men who look similar to you. But only you and one other suspect have criminal records, which is the reason I’m investigating you.”
“Hey, I didn’t have anything to do with a goddamn liquor store. I’m telling you, this is bullshit.”
“Calm down, Mr. Bello.”
“Fuck you, ‘Calm down.’ You call me and tell me I killed someone and—”
“Mr. Bello, the reason I’m calling is to give you the opportunity to tell me where you were at approximately seven-thirty p.m. on the night of March fifteenth. If you have a credible alibi, I can eliminate you as a person of interest.”
“March! That’s over four fuckin’ months ago. How the hell would I know where I was? Tell me where you were four months ago.”
“I don’t need an alibi, Mr. Bello, but unless you want to be arrested for Mr. Kim’s murder, you do. Now, I can send a couple of cops over to pick you up and bring you to the precinct, or you can cooperate with me.”
“How the hell can I cooperate? I don’t know where the fuck I was!”
“Mr. Bello, I’m going to give you two days to do some research. If you have a calendar on your phone, take a look at it. Look at your credit card bills and see if you made a purchase at the time Mr. Kim was shot. Call your credit card company if you have to. See if you had an appointment with someone, an appointment that can be verified. If you can provide some documentation that proves you were not in Queens the night Mr. Kim was killed, I’ll be satisfied. If not, well, I’ll just have to proceed with my investigation, which probably means that I’ll arrest you.”
“You gotta be shittin’ me.”
“I’ll call you the day after tomorrow at this time, Mr. Bello, and if you’re not home when I call, I’m going to put out a warrant for your arrest. Have a good day.”
Two days later, as promised, Ella called Dante Bello back.
“Well,” she said. “Where were you on the night of March fifteenth?”
“I was at a Knicks game. I went with a couple of friends.”
“Really,” Ella said, making it clear she found that alibi a little too convenient.
“That’s right. I did like you said and checked my, my calendar and it said ‘Knicks game.’ I should have remembered, cuz the fuckin’ Knicks lost and it cost me fifty bucks.”
What Bello had done was obvious. He couldn’t prove where he’d been on March fifteenth and had checked the Knicks schedule and saw they played a game that night at the Garden. To make the story ring a bit truer, he noted that they’d lost and decided to embellish the story with the part about how he’d lost a fifty-dollar bet.
“Do you still have the ticket stub from the game, Mr. Bello?”
“Fuck, no. Who the hell keeps ticket stubs?”
“How did you pay for the ticket? Online? By credit card?”
“Nah, we bought ’em from a guy outside the Garden and paid cash. Going to the game was a last-minute thing, so we scalped the tickets. You gonna arrest me for that?”
“What are the names of the men who went to the game with you?”
“Joey Netti and his cousin, Jimmy.”
“Netti, just like Joey. I told you, they’re cousins.”
“And where do they live?”
“Here. Manhattan.”
Ella didn’t say anything for a moment, letting the silence convey her doubt. “Mr. Bello, do you understand that if I learn that you’ve lied to me—”
“Hey! I never ripped off no liquor store. I’m not some fuckin’ junkie punk. I don’t do shit like that. I’ve never done shit like that. You asked where I was and I told you. So you can take your face recognition software and shove it up your ass.”
Dante slammed down the phone—and Ella smiled. Dante had no alibi. No jury was going to buy his story—backed up by two hoods like himself—that he’d been at the Knicks game when Dominic DiNunzio was killed.